@smalls103 initial rankings had PSU 131 and Iowa 114. This was by placement and no bonus. Few key changes:
1. Kemerer is coming back, that is +10.5 for Iowa. (I imagine he slots him 2nd and he had Kennedy 8th)
2. Berge and Dellavecchia has retired, PSU loses 6.5 points (he had him 7th) and Iowa gains 3.5 (Young was 8th, he is now 6th)
There obviously are other changes that are likely but for the sake of not overly complicating this, I won't update for those. After those 2 moves, Iowa is ahead 128 and PSU 124.5. This is giving us 4 champs, SVN/Kerkvliet 5th and Beard 8th and I think if we had all 4 champs repeat, we'd say it was a damn good tournament. Obviously repeating 4 will be hard but it's definitely fair to start our guys at the top as they are returning champs.
Few other thoughts:
1. RoHo is out for the year but he was 15th in the rankings so that's not much points. Bigger issue here is his potential to improve a ton and be a podium guy and it's a longer shot to find a podium guy with true freshman Steen.
2. Max Dean is out of 184 and to 197 for us, where to slot him?
3. He slotted Marinelli 5th. You can joke about that being higher than he's ever finished but obviously it's possible he wins the whole thing finally next year. Also, Mekhi Lewis and Shane Griffith is going up possibly (Mekhi I think is a sure thing) so he should start 3rd if anything. Once again, since nothing is official yet (like retirements or Kemerer returning) I'll keep this as is.
4. He also had ADS 5th (Seabass and Micic pushing him down but everything I've heard is Micic isn't coming back but possible Vito is going up .... so just slot Vito above ADS to keep points the same) I imagine Iowa fans would argue this ranking in a big way.
4. He didn't give Murin or Assad podium finishes and it's definitely possible they can.
5. Iowa won the bonus battle by 10 last year
I say all that to say this, obviously Iowa is the favorite next year, heavy favorite even. It's pretty telling because they scored 130 (not counting the Murin spike) this year with Bull missing the podium. We will need major improvements next year and then likely major overachievement at NCAAs and .... I couldn't be more excited. In the words of Bo Nickal "That's what we do" and if we can pull it off next year, many legendary stories are born (did Joe Lee break through mentally and get on the podium, did SVN or Bartlett break through all odds and make the finals? did Terrell Barraclough AA as like the 28th seed, opportunities are endless)
As we know by now, Cael has a plan and he's a master of executing the plan. When the plan is executed, we as fans are satisfied regardless of the final result as we saw this year.
